Cloud computing, with its promise of reduced CAPEX and OPEX, presents a compelling business case. In IaaS, computation resources are rented from a cloud service provider (CSP). There is no server hardware or software to purchase and maintain, and organizations benefit from reduced IT expenses and improved flexibility. Enterprises have fewer IT headaches to deal with and can focus on their core business.

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

Public cloud providers… wish to make it clear to you that security is a shared responsibility

Moving from fortification to skirmish – Skirmishers – troops deployed in loose formation in advance of and/or on the flanks of the main body. These troops drew enemy fire, developed their position, and warned comrades of an imminent clash. The civil war dictionary

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

What will the future perimeter look like? In this post, we will share some thoughts about the future of the information security perimeter and where are we going with this old concept:

Cloud storage provider Box has joined the Microsoft Cloud Storage Program, integrating with Microsoft Office to enable businesses to seamlessly access content across devices and platforms.

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

The new collaboration includes enabling users to open, edit and save documents back to Box directly from Office for iOS, and is available today for free, with integration with Office Online arriving later this year.

Nobody debates the need for more education on open source. Almost a year ago, more than half businesses surveyed used and contributed to open source, according to a Black Duck Software report. About one-third make it easy for employees to begin or join their own open source projects, the study said.

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

"By learning open source, now you're making yourself a little bit more defined and a little bit more valuable. Anything they can do to differentiate themselves is beneficial."

Ask any organization why implementing a private cloud is important, and you are likely to receive a reply with different reasons. Even if you ask the same question to different people working in the same organization, you’d probably get different reasons.

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

Listed are some of the common challenges that are faced by the cloud users

What if the data of 80 million Anthem subscribers were encrypted at rest? And access required two-factor authentication? Would the security breach still have occurred? These lines in the new cyber-security “anthem” are being sung with gusto by those following the bouncing cursor of a breach that may be larger than all healthcare security breaches of the last ten years combined.

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

This means that someone with access to a computer can access the database decryption key, or potentially even unencrypted database contents, from the RAM, or ‘working memory,’ of the computer.

Recent revelations of the NSA’s advanced firmware hacking have sent the InterWebs aflutter. The NSA’s firmware hack is a software module capable of reflashing writeable firmware chips. It can also persist during system rebuilds and hide itself in such a way that makes regular antimalware detection very difficult.

Open-source application container project Docker has rolled out three new orchestration tools -- Machine, Swarm and Compose 1.1 -- to enable developers and sysadmins to create and manage a new generation of 100 percent portable distributed applications

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

The new tools are designed to ensure complete freedom of choice in how and where multi-container, multi-host applications are being built and operated.

A new survey revealed that cloud services migration and integration was a top challenge for most IT professionals. Additionally, CDW researchers found that the majority of these professionals said they would make more use of cloud services, but the complexity they perceive around enabling and integrating those workloads with legacy systems holds them back. Here's everything you need to know.

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

The CDW survey included responses from more than 1,200 IT professionals across various industries.

Microsoft has adopted a new standard for cloud privacy that commits the company to protect the privacy of customers' data, not to use it for advertisement purposes, and to inform the customer of legal requests for personal data.

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

The company said it was adopting the ISO/IEC 27018, published last year by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which outlines a common set of security categories and controls that can be implemented by a public cloud.

Danish physicist and Nobel Prize winner Nils Bohr once stated, “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it is about the future.”

This does not stop companies from trying to use data to model what will happen in the future and where they can improve their chances of success in the market.

Peter Azzopardi's insight:

From a strategic level, using analytics – and most likely predictive analytics, to be specific – and techniques within the business means that everyone across the company has to have access to data and be more skilled in using it.

This has been doing the rounds through USA users of Microsoft services and now seems to be available more widely, but.... just in case you haven't already seen this offer from Microsoft for 100GB extra of OneDrive space for two years, try clicking this link. It seems to be linked to 'Bing' in some way - my guess is that it's just Microsoft's way of getting more people onboard with OneDrive in a big way - at the end of the day, it will all be about head count on each platform and upselling users

We found all four products to be capable network monitoring tools that performed well in our basic tasks such as checking for host availability and measuring bandwidth usage. Beyond the basics, there were quite a few differences in terms of features, granularity and configuration options.

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